Wanissa watched as smoke rose from the mangled, burnt-out carcasses of 12 buses in the transport depot at Aubervilliers, north of Paris. “All this is a catastrophe,” said the 51-year-old cleaner, who now had to walk 3 miles to her next job from her morning spent mopping the entrance halls of local tower blocks.
The fire was caused by petrol bombs thrown at the depot during the early hours of Friday morning, transport authorities said. The facade of the adjacent Aubervilliers aquatic centre, where training will take place for the 2024 Olympics, was also damaged.
It was just one piece of public infrastructure targeted by arson in a night when fireworks were thrown at police in towns and cities across France, from Roubaix in the north to Marseille in the south, and public buildings were smashed and burned, including 28 schools, 34 town halls and 80 police stations or gendarme buildings in towns from Burgundy to the Loire.
Supermarkets in small towns and shops in some big cities were looted, including Nike in central Paris and an Apple store in Strasbourg.
“Everyone feels anxious and insecure,” Wanissa said. But she understood the groundswell of anger on display in three nights of nationwide unrest after the death of a 17-year-old boy, Nahel, of Algerian background, shot at close range by a police officer at a traffic stop in Nanterre, west of Paris, on Tuesday.
The targeting of local buses, so crucial in transporting workers from the low-income suburbs on the edge of Paris, was seen by the government as highly symbolic of a deep-seated rage at the state. “It adds injustice to injustice,” said the transport minister, Clément Beaune. A tram was set alight in Lyon, and a bus driver was pulled from her bus in Bordeaux as a group of people attempted to torch it. The interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, took the extraordinary measure of demanding all bus and tram transport be shut down after 9pm across France.
“What we’re seeing is tension that has been growing for years: the shooting of Nahel is a reminder there’s too much racism in France,” Wanissa said. “The government has to act on racism. We’ve been saturated by it since the 2022 presidential election campaign where [the far-right candidate] Éric Zemmour was all over the media attacking foreigners and immigrants. Marine Le Pen is gaining support. The government constantly talks about new immigration laws, which stigmatises people further.
“When my colleagues who get up to clean at 4am or 5am look around at other cleaners, we are all Black and north African. France is divided and this police shooting has brought it all to the fore. That boy is not the first to be killed by police and we’re all waking up today thinking it could be my nephews, my son who is shot. The government has to tackle racism if anything is to move on.”
Two unions representing half of French police said on Friday that they were at war with “vermin” and “savage hordes”, sparking criticism from politicians on the left. “It’s no longer enough to call for calm, it must be imposed,” the Alliance Police Nationale and UNSA Police unions said in a statement that was disavowed by the overall head of the UNSA union federation.
The government has asked for local decrees banning the sale and transport of fireworks and flammable material. For several nights, powerful “roman candle” firework mortars, intended to be fired from the ground towards the sky for pyrotechnic displays, were lit and thrown horizontally at police during clashes.
“There was screaming, smoke and fireworks going off in all directions,” said Zakia, 71, who had been awake all night keeping watch at her tower block. “There were kids with huge bags of fireworks who fire them at police.”
Malika, 73, a retired hospital healthcare assistant, said: “From my flat on the ninth floor it was all fire and smoke. We’ve long been worried about the reputation of the suburbs north of Paris, which are always stigmatised, but actually now it’s the whole country – from Marseille to Lille.”
Nearby, there were smashed windows across the front of a maison du quartier community centre in Pantin, which housed a library and youth and children’s activities. Local people said the fact that this respected resource had been attacked was a sign of how the unrest was different to the urban disturbances of 2005, when the death of two young boys hiding from police in an electricity substation in Clichy-sous-Bois outside Paris triggered weeks of clashes and a state of national emergency was declared.
In 2005, the unrest began days after the boys’ deaths and built more slowly. This time it was instant and has spread across France very quickly, filmed and shared on social media, and with more public services targeted. In 2005 more than 9,000 cars were burned in three weeks; overnight from Thursday to Friday alone about 1,119 cars were burned across France.
One video on social media showed a group of people targeting a school in Villeurbanne, outside Lyon, with a woman running after them shouting: “Please! Not the school!”
Samira, who works at the maison du quartier and lives in a tower block opposite, saw the centre smashed during hours of unrest. “I was at my window until 4am. At the start of the night, there were about 60 young people running around. I was shouting down at them: ‘Not the cars! Don’t burn people’s cars!’ There was only one car burnt which was a police car. Two officers had been sitting in it. It was torched and they ran out.”
The ash-white remains of the police car lay overturned at the end of the road. Samira said: “People want to make themselves heard about injustice: the 17-year-old boy should not have been killed by police. This feels very different to 2005, there is more anger, more places are being attacked, more public resources are being targeted. The thing is, this is not the way to express anger by destroying local services.”
Maurice, 30, who works at a food factory, said: “Young people are calling it a revolt for justice. It’s true that even the way the police speak to you if you’re Black is disdainful. But destroying transport and buildings is just going to harm the people who live in these areas. We’re the ones who will have to pay for it.”
Jacob, a teenager, looked at the charred buses and said: “I hope I can still get my bus to football tonight, it would take me an hour to walk.”
Cricri, 20, a business student from Bobigny outside Paris, where a post office and a jobcentre had been burned, had seen bins and cars set alight. “I’m going to get home early tonight. This is going to go on for nights on end.”
